Automobile safety and associated issues, such as automobile repair and insurance cost, continue to be an area of intense public interest. The public and consumer groups continue to demand safer cars and the automobile industry continues to resist change. Meanwhile, the state of the art in automobile design continues to evolve.
It is well known that some of the most dangerous and. potentially damaging types of automobile accidents, both to the automobile as well as the driver and any passengers, is the head-on collision. Many recent safety developments, such as the airbag and automatically retracting seatbelts, have been directed towards increasing the safety of passengers in such collisions. Other developments designed to protect the occupants of a vehicles in a head-on collision have been directed toward automobile design. Changes which have been made to the design of automobiles include the incorporation of crumple zones at the front and rear of automobiles and the inclusion of side-impact beams in the doors of automobiles. Crumple zones are designed to collapse in the event of a head-on collision, thereby absorbing the force of the collision before the force reaches the passenger compartment. It would be desirable to have an additional structural member which could help to absorb and deflect the force of a collision.
An additional area of concentration in automobile design is the development of bumpers which are capable of withstanding low speed crashes without being damaged. Such crashes, on the order of five miles per hour, occur quiet frequently and can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to repair the damage to the cars bumpers. Ideally, a car should have a bumper which is capable of withstanding such crashes and even higher speed crashes without being damaged. However, most automobile manufacturers provide relatively weak bumpers on their cars which are easily damaged and allow the force of an impact to reach passengers and causes great losses, both in terms of personal injury and death and also financial.
Inter-related with the above described problems of vehicle and occupant safety and resistance to damage is the issue of the ease.
It is not known in the art to provide a bumper for a vehicle which increases the safety of the vehicle, is resistant to damage in both high and low speed crashes. Such a bumper could dramatically reduce medical and repair costs as well as insurance costs. In view of the above, such a bumper would solve many problems existing in automobile safety design.